Muscle-Building Tips

Build The Ultimate Male Physique

It’s worth noting that building the ultimate male physique isn't just about the aforementioned. Instead, we should focus more on the muscles of the upper back: latissimus dorsi, teres major, trapezius, et al. These muscles, developed correctly, will help pull your shoulders back, helping to create the broad-shouldered look that men find powerful and women find attractive.

To prevent imbalances and to help create such a look, try to maintain a 3:2 ratio of pulling exercises to pushing exercises. As an example, 3 sets of rows, 2 sets of bench presses. Following this pattern, you are far less likely to develop unattractive imbalances. And, in addition, you will be less likely to incur injury. And probably more likely to get naked.

If you’re already suffering from “computer guy” posture resulting in a round-shouldered look, you can start fixing this by incorporating some corrective exercises into your routine. A good place to start is corner stretches for your pecs, followed by stick-ups. Do this for 5 sets of 5 reps before you train, and you’ll fix that posture in no time.

3- Lift Heavy At Least Four Days Per Month

The benefits of heavy training are widely documented, so once again, I’ll just focus on the relevancy of building a bang-worthy body. Training heavy doesn’t just make you strong; it makes you look strong. Training in low-rep ranges (3 to 5 reps) necessitates the use of near-maximal weight. In general, you would be working within 75% to 85% of your 1RM.

This elicits some profound physiological changes. Training with heavy loads leads to an increase in both neurogenic and myogenic muscle tone, both of which are important for building an attractive physique. First, it is necessary to recognize that for the purposes of this writing, the word “tone” means the level of tension in a muscle. With that understood, let’s talk about each type.

Neurogenic tone refers to the level of tension in a muscle in a working or flexed state. That is how “hard” a muscle is when you are training it or just flexing it for some chick at the gym/beach/World of Warcraft party.

Myogenic tone can be defined as residual tension in a resting muscle. What this really means is how hard, full and dense your muscles are when you’re just hanging out. Rather than some artificial pump, an increase in myogenic tone is a permanent increase in the appearance of your muscles.

Increasing neurogenic and myogenic tone also has the benefit of making muscles more visible at slightly higher levels of body fat. There is a lot to be said for having your triceps pop out a bit more at 10% (just imagine how they’ll look at 8%). To achieve the increases, my clients all have at least one day per week dedicated to lifting near maximal loads. In addition to the aforementioned benefits, heavy training also leads to strength increases, which has obvious implications for training in the future.

Takeaway: Lift heavy, get hard. Wait, what?

4- Mix Up Your Training

In order to create a body suited for a variety of physical tasks, you need to change up your workout pretty frequently. Training variety keeps you motivated and invariably leads to better results. In terms of helping you increase your rating on the scale of sexy, the main benefit is from a fat-loss perspective.

While you can argue that training ADD can inhibit muscle gains (which is only true if you are changing haphazardly with no thought to programming), exposing yourself to consistently changing stimulus is an excellent way to ramp up metabolism, and it consistently increases the processes by which fat loss is made possible.

Certainly, I do not advocate switching programs day to day. Instead, I recommend choosing or designing workouts that have multiple training methods built into a week.

John Romaniello's final tips for building the ultimate male physique, next...